


100 Outlast Prompts

by arcanicEmbers



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-08-19 07:24:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 29
Words: 16,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanicEmbers/pseuds/arcanicEmbers
Summary: Miles Upshur's life was changed from the moment he stepped foot into Mount Massive Asylum.100 prompts, most of which follow Miles and the Walrider learning to live with each other. Some chapters may feature other characters such as Billy Hope, Waylon Park, and the Langermanns, posted in a loosely chronological order.





	1. Fury

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this work is about Miles and the Walrider. Yes, the first chapter is about Billy and the Walrider. This is what happens when you put a prompt list in chronological order. Miles will be here soon, I promise. Until then, enjoy! 
> 
> Chapter TW: Parental Death

When the Walrider reported to Billy Hope what it had learned in the minds of the doctors. That his mother had been targeted and killed by Murkoff to keep her silent about what went on there, the man had ‘woken up’. Maybe that wasn’t the best term- he had constantly been aware, in his own dim and unfocused way- but he became _alert._ He snapped out of the haze that all the time spent watching the video had left him in. And once he had done that… he realized that he couldn’t do anything.

He was very secured in that bubble; he couldn’t work his way free, nor could he use his mouth to scream out the anguish that was very rapidly building in his chest. He was trapped. He couldn’t do _anything._

The only part of him that was free was the Walrider.

It was the exact moment that Hope’s grief became too much to hold in his weak body that the project Dr. Wernicke had started so long ago was brought to completion. The Walrider was fully formed, conscience while still being an extension of Billy, and ready to obey its host.

Its host wanted to _destroy._

Perhaps one or both had a sadistic streak to them. Billy wanted revenge. He wanted the doctors to _die_ , just like they did to his mother, while the Swarm was all to happy to comply with. It tore through all the doctors as easily as if they were old cloth dolls stuffed with hay, and it painted the walls with their viscera. It spared only, at Billy’s request, Dr. Wernicke. He was the only doctor who cared about the boy, in his mind- but all the rest were fair game.

When that didn’t satisfy its host, it continued to tear apart not only the doctors, but everyone who came in to try and control it, control its host.

It was unbelievably foolish of them to think that bullets could stop it.

Only once every employee that hadn’t already been twisted by their own experiments was dead did Billy’s anger fade into sorrow. The only problem was…

The Walrider didn’t know how to fix it.


	2. 12. You

The guards didn’t go into the lab. Not anymore.

They were all gone, all dead.

He… he was alone.

No. No, that was wrong. He wasn’t entirely alone. He _remembered_ what that horrible isolation was like, back when he was never allowed out of his padded cell unless it was to be forced into this god forsaken bubble. He remembered it all too well and comparing that to this didn’t quite fit. He wasn’t completely alone, not anymore.

He couldn’t sleep with his eyes shut anymore. They wouldn’t allow him to close his eyes- special devices held them open. He could still unfocus them enough that the screen in front of him with the ever-repeating pictures and images and flashes was only a dim blur. That helped him gather up his fragmented thoughts into something that resembled coherency.

He couldn’t even reach out for or touch his only friend physically. Every single part of his body was secured and held fast in place. But… That didn’t mean he couldn’t reach out with something else.

_“Hey,”_ he called out with his mind, straining to keep his eyes unfocused so that the screen didn’t destroy his already wobbly train of thought. _“Are you there?”_

There was only a heartbeat of silence before that familiar comforting presence encircled his consciousness to sooth him.

_“I’m always here,”_ it whispered in it’s warm and somehow cinnamon scented voice. _“Is someone else trying to hurt you, Billy?”_

_“… No,”_ he replied hesitantly. _“I… just want to talk. It’s too quiet. Too lonely.”_

There were a few more seconds of silenced, before the Walrider quietly asked, _“What do you want to talk about?”_

He shuddered against the liquid pressing in on him from all sides, surrounding him. _“Anything. Please, say anything.”_

There was a faint tingle in his head, the static he had long since gotten used too increasing for just a moment, and then the gentle voice began to speak. It echoed a fairy tale that his mother used to recite to him when he was little. Something about a butterfly and a moth. The boy exhaled and relaxed, letting the words it spoke wash over him. He wasn’t really listening, but he was just glad for the voice being there to fill the silence. He let himself slowly drift into unconsciousness as the mental voice quietly talked him to sleep.


	3. 94. Building

It was a large building, Mount Massive. It looked almost castle like, really.

Miles took a few moments to get some good footage of the place as he spoke over the filming. This wasn’t like a documentary or anything- The only footage he’d have to work with was what he filmed. No more, no less.

“I start feeling sick just looking at this place,” he muttered to the camera as he slowly approached the building. There were… armored vehicles around the front of it. Something had clearly gone wrong, there. The front door was locked, and he swore to himself before turning to try a side entrance. “Mount Massive Asylum, shut down amid scandal and government secrecy in 1971, reopened by Murkoff Psychiatric Systems in 2009 under the guise of a charitable operation.”

He kept walking until he found a hole in a fence. It was easy to duck under- Hm. Had someone gotten out of there? That might explain all the armed vehicles, anyway. Hm.

Some scaffolding. Oh, it was as good as a written invitation to him.

“Cell phone reception cut off abruptly a mile out, more like a jammer than lost signal. The Murkoff Corporation has a long track record of disguising profit as charity. But never on American soil. Whatever they thought they could get out of this place has to be big. Might finally be the story that breaks the bastards."

He sighed and stashed the camera away long enough to climb the ladder, moving easily up the rungs. Pulling himself onto the board was a little harder, but not by much. He kept himself fit. After all, when you were the kind of guy who stuck his noise in whatever business you had to, you were also the kind of guy who had to be fast.

Finally, he pulled himself in through a broken window. The light above crackled and shattered, but that didn’t dissuade the man at all.

He was in.


	4. 66. Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter TW: Needles

Everything would be okay.

That was what he told himself, over and over again as he crawled through dirty water in the electric room, trying to repower the building without the man with the makeshift bat noticing him. His shoulder was already throbbing from when the man had caught sight of him earlier, and his cracked ribs couldn’t take another solid hit. Still, he just had to keep pushing. If he kept going…

Everything would be okay.

He told himself that as he headed back to the security room, chafing in the wet jeans he had to wear now. All he had to do then was get back to the security room and open the door. The front door. He could get out, that way. Get out, get to his jeep, and get the fuck away from this godawful place. That was the plan.

He should have realized it wouldn’t be that easy. He should have known that the goddamn priest wouldn’t let him just walk out of there, not when he had a ‘calling’. His mind tried to focus on what was going on, but all he could really do was take in little things.

What was in the needle? It was making his head foggy and it was becoming hard to think or fight back as ‘Father’ Martin twisted his head to face the monitors. His brain struggled to keep up with what he was seeing, the journalist side scrambling to try and piece it together.

“Our lord, the Walrider, tearing His truth into the unbelievers.”

Soldiers, getting flung about as though they were ragdolls. He couldn’t see what was doing it- his head couldn’t keep up with anything that was going on. He tried to weakly shake it to get some sense back, but the man was holding onto his hair.

“The only way out of this place is the truth,” he muttered. “Accept the gospel and all doors will open before you."

His vision blurred and Father Martin’s voice faded out. He only managed one more thought before he blacked out completely.

Nothing was going to be okay.


	5. 19. Holding

He had to hold himself together, but god was it hard.

He was waist high in sewer water with god knew what in it, and with the skin rubbed raw from the amount of times his pants had gotten soaked and chafed against his skin. He could only imagine what kind of nasty infections he was going to have to deal with after he get out of there.

That was low on his list of things to worry about at that moment, though. Hell, _dying_ was only a couple notches about it.

A rattling of chains echoed through the wide sewer, and he felt a shiver through his spine that had nothing to do with the damp tunnel air. He couldn’t speed his way through the water, not without making a lot of noise-

Stairs. Oh, thank god, stairs.

He pushed through the water as quickly as he dared, and he heard the chains clack wildly as the movement caught the man’s attention. That didn’t matter right now. He finally got free of the water and managed to dart up the stairs. He spun around the corner-

A ladder!

It was a run and a leap to grab onto it, and he almost slipped off, but he managed to hook an arm into the rungs and keep himself up. He coughed and scrambled up the ladder, pulling himself through the hole and flopping over onto the ground. He needed a minute. Just a minute to rest and not have to run. He was quickly forming a puddle, but he didn’t care.

He coughed again. He hadn’t even gone under the water, but he was coughing hard, and gasping air into his lungs. Why couldn’t he just get a damn breath in? What was stopping him from being able to breath?

He felt the answer before he really realized what it was, in the form of hot streaks running down his face. He reached a hand up, and only when he wiped away the liquid, he found there did he finally put together what was going on.

What kind of stupid investigative journalist couldn’t even realize when he started crying?


	6. 70. Disgust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter TW: Cannibalism

Of all the things that had to be a trend in this god forsaken asylum, of all the things for the people there to have in common, why did it have to be cannibalism?

First there were the twins, the eerily calm and rational ‘followers’ of Father Martin who had already divided up his internal organs in their minds. If he were being honest…

Of all the people who had so far tried to kill him, they scared him the most. They seemed like they hadn’t been given whatever treatment many of the other patients had to endure- their skin was still whole, with no blisters or scratched off areas, and they seemed perfectly aware of their surroundings. They seemed like perfectly average individuals, except for two things.

The fact that they didn’t get to the ‘wear clothing in public’ lesson from whoever taught them their manners, and the fact that they wanted to _eat_ him.

It wasn’t just them, either. He’d heard whispers about some cannibal in the kitchens (a place he stayed far, far away from for that very reason) and there were plenty of bodies that had human mouth shaped chunks torn out from them.

And now! Now he was being chased by another pair who only seemed to know a dozen words between them- two of them being ‘want’ and ‘meat’. They were persistent assholes. Even the Twin usually disappeared for a while after he managed to avoid their flanking maneuvers.

Not these two. Blocking the doors, jumping over a huge cavern, nearly falling to his death from said cavern- Nothing would shake them or their battle cries of “death and taxes!”

He made his way through room after room, until he finally slammed open a door and found-

A dead end.

No- not a dead end. There was a dumbwaiter. And a voice, telling him to get on there.

Yes. He knew that he might get pulled into something even worse. But the door was bulging on its hinges, and he knew he had to get out of there somehow. He bit his lip, weighed it for just a second- and then he dove for the dumb waiter.

Whatever came of the decision, he would just have to figure out a way to deal with it. Just like everything else.


	7. 33. Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter TW: Finger Gore, Emetophobia
> 
> Yeah, you all know what's coming.

Miles wasn’t sure who he should be angrier at- himself for managing to get into the least defensible position possible, or this ‘Doctor’ for having been in the perfect position to grab him.

In his defense, it was get in the damn dumbwaiter or die right then and there. Given that he was still alive (albeit strapped down very securely), he had done the only thing he could do at the time.

The scales were further tipped in favor of being pissed at the doctor when he stopped the wheelchair right in front of a door. He could see outside- it was night, and it was raining, but if there was any chance that was a way out of this hellhole, he could use it. He tried struggling to no avail as the man leaned on the chair.

“I love the mountain air up here at night. You want to head out, take a stroll? Go ahead, I’ll wait here. Go on, run free. I’m in no hurry.”

He tried to yank his hands free, and his struggles actually shook the wheelchair he was strapped to. The doctor just chuckled at his efforts.

“No? Alright. Nose to the grindstone. I like that.” He grabbed the handles and spun the man away from the door, away from outsider and possible freedom. “Okay, then. Right this way.”

He had only known this man for a minute, and he already wanted to punch his damn face in.

It was only when the man flipped the light switch on in the room he had brought Miles’ too that the man’s anger ebbed, to be replaced by fear.

It was a bathroom. There was blood everywhere, covering the sink and the walls. He swallowed nervously and glanced around- his eyes were immediately drawn to the small tray of surgery tools that were also covered in blood. Beyond that- much more threateningly- were _garden_ tools. He caught sight of a hacksaw and shears before he felt the ever present weight of his camera being lifted away from him, and he realized that the man was actually talking.

“-worried about how much time you’ve been spending with Father Martin.”

That was all he registered before something sharp was placed against his neck, and he strained to keep his head away from him. Whatever the man was saying didn’t matter, not right then- what mattered was using every ounce of his limited control to get away from the object.

He switched between tools a couple of times, before selecting the shears. Miles thought that this had to be it- this was where he died.

What actually happened was much, much worse.

The ‘Doctor’ grabbed his right hand and slid the shears around the index finger, before slamming his weight onto them. Miles physically couldn’t stop the scream that escaped his throat as the dull blades met bone and stopped short. Trager muttered something and slammed against the shears again.

He had thought the cracked lungs were bad, but nothing compared to the agony of metal not cutting, no- _tearing_ through the skin. It couldn’t have burned more if the man had taken an iron to the stump, and his vision blurred alarmingly. At that point, he would have almost welcomed passing out, but the man wasn’t letting him.

A hand met his face and his eyes refocused. Whatever dulling the momentary disorientation had offered him was gone, replaced only by the pain.

And then Trager grabbed his left hand.  

The second time around was no easier. His screams echoed in the tiled room- not that they had any effect on the man with the weapons. He seemed pleased with himself as he took the digits with him out of the room, leaving Miles behind- sweating, bleeding, crying.

He had to get the fuck out of there. He remembered seeing writing on the wall during his trip through Mount Massive.

Fingers first. Then balls. Then tongue.

Nope. He was not sticking around to let it get to that point. He struggled against the bindings, letting the adrenaline and endorphins that were almost overloading his body work-

And he was free.

He staggered over to the sink and threw up- it somehow helped to lessen the pain he was feeling. Or maybe that was just it dulling with time. Either way, he had to keep moving.

He knew he had to move. He did. But…

But he looked down at his mangled hands, and he realized that the sick sonofabitch had calculated this even more carefully than he’d thought before. His remaining fingers tightened into fists.

His left ring finger was cut flush with the rest of the hand. There was nothing left- not even a stump. His mind went to the wedding band he kept _off_ during his working hours. He couldn’t wear it ever again. Not on that finger, anyway.

And the other- the right index finger. Arguably the most important for writing and supporting the rest of them, and one his dominant hand.

The man had to have made the guess when he took the camera. The camera was the only thing that gave any sort of indication which hand he favored.

Damn it. Damn it! This was beyond just torture for the sake of torture. This sadistic fuck wanted him to feel it, even assuming he lived long enough to have to live with the damage. It was intended to be a permanent punishment for- what? Being there? Crossing paths with this so-called doctor?

Fuck it. Fuck him.

Miles was going to get out of there without losing any more fucking pieces, and he was going to do it just to spite that fucking ‘doctor’.


	8. 52. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miles deals with some... negative thoughts.
> 
> Chapter TW: Suicidal Ideation

Miles wanted to give up. He wanted to give up so _badly._

He was curled up in a vent, his fevered body leeching the cool of the metal out of it, trembling at the sound of scissors snipping unfeelingly at the air echoing through the halls. Blood leaked around the makeshift bandages that he had clumsily tied around the stubs of his fingers. The only benefit was that it leaked sluggishly. They didn’t burn quite as much as when Trager was actively sinking dull metal into them, but the sharp stinging was a constant reminder in his mind that…

Life was never going to be same for him, even if he did get out.

It was becoming harder for him to breath, too. His ribs had been cracked earlier but with all the heavy breathing and being tossed around, he wouldn’t be surprised if they had turned into a full break. His breaths were short and shallow- anything deeper felt like a weight on his chest.

It would be so much easier if he just… ran at those scissors. It would hurt terribly, yes, but only for a little while. After that, he would never hurt again. He was almost ready to accept the absence of everything if it meant the absence of pain, too. What did he have to fight for? Nothing!

… For half a moment, his mind was empty. He had no reason to keep fighting. And then, slowly, names and words trickled in.

Lynn and Blake. How would they feel if they found out he died there? They were old college buddies in the same line of work, and they’d always had a friendly rivalry between them. If they learned he died- No. If they learned he gave up… Lynn would smack him and call him all sorts of synonyms for idiot, and Blake would just be so _disappointed_ …

What about the person who called him there? The Whistleblower? He doubted whoever it was had been able to send a message from the asylum in this state, meaning he sent it earlier- before this place became hell on earth. What if that one got out and find out that the reporter he summoned had been killed?

There were still people to let down if he gave up. The idea didn’t thrill him, but that was the situation he was in. He would just have to make the best of it, wouldn’t he?

He rolled over and took a dee breath before forcing his injured hands down to bear his weight as he began to crawl through the vent again. He had to keep going, even if the idea of more pain terrified him, because the idea of taking his last few breaths in this hellhole terrified him even more. However much he was willing to entertain the idea… he wasn’t going to go through with it. Hadn’t he said it himself earlier? Get out of there. If for no other reason than to spite the scissors wielding asshole.


	9. 82. Revenge

He had killed a man.

Miles had… never killed anybody before. That felt almost needless to think about- of course had hadn’t killed anybody before! The average person hadn’t. Occasionally he’d had a mild urge, an _I wish that annoying fuck would get hit by a car,_ sort of thought. Everyone got those, though, hadn’t they? He would never act on it, never do anything to make it happen, and if the assholes ever got hit by cars, he’d probably feel like shit for ever wishing it, but… He had never killed someone before.

There was a dead man right below him.

Since he had arrived at Mount Massive, he had seen more bodies in one place and time then he had ever seen before. More bodies carved into bits or left whole to rot or eaten or laid down and- Oh, god that last one was horrible. This wasn’t the type of place anybody would ever want to be. Not here, not with all the suffering and pain and bodies.

One of them was _his_ fault.

His survival instincts had kicked into full gear. Even if he _was_ in pain, and even if he was terrified just by seeing the man, he had forced himself to keep moving. Keep going. Keep fighting, because anything else would result in death or worse. Sitting still, resting, trying to find food or bandages, anything that wasn’t running and escaped would eventually kill him. He had to live. He had to do whatever it took to live.

Anything. Up to and including…

Richard Trager was dead, his torso crushed in an elevator older then he was, and his blood was on Miles’ hands.

He didn’t feel any guilt about it, either. He didn’t feel much of anything. He’d instinctively cracked a dark joke, his go to method for coping, and even that had failed to make him pause and laugh or pause and shudder at himself. He should be feeling guilty, right? Or sick, or disgusted, or- …

Wait. No, no, he was wrong He _did_ feel something. Curled up on the roof of the elevator above the corpse of Richard Trager, willing himself to get up and keep moving before someone else found him, he felt something.

It was an almost microscopic feeling of relief.


	10. 18. Sympathy

“I’m not the only victim here. Not by a long shot.”

It was something he had known in the back of his mind since he arrived- after all, the whole reason he took this case was because Murkoff had made a habit of doing whatever it took to make a profit and not caring how much pain it left in its wake.

Still, that had been shoved on a back burner when it came to survival.

Now? Now he was reminded, once again. These people… most of them weren’t bad. Chris Walker, the big guy who wouldn’t get off his ass… some file a long time ago had told Miles the man was a veteran with PTSD. Probably only there because something triggered a reaction at the wrong time, wrong place.

Most of them had come there for _help._ And they were used and abused for what? Some project built on half science, half magic? Nobody had helped because- How had the pyro put it?

‘Nobody cares about a few forgotten lunatics.’ Right.

He still harbored nothing but a bitter ball of anger for Trager. Just like he harbored for every singly damn person who had willingly gone along with this. Oh, he knew there had to be people who were ignorant about the truth of what was going on there. Or people who tried to stop it- like the Whistleblower that had written to him- but… The people who came up with this twisted scheme?

He wasn’t the religious type, but if there was a Hell, he prayed they’d find themselves there.


	11. 10. Without

Miles was alone.

That wasn’t really a shock. He was almost always alone these days, even outside of this damn asylum. Inside of it, he constantly _wished_ that these people would just leave him the fuck alone. Still, throughout all the things he’d managed to survive in there, no matter what had happened to him, he’d held one constant companion.

His camera.

And now the device was gone, fallen through a crack in the floor and out of sight. He didn’t know where it was, or in what condition, or even if it still actually worked. He couldn’t move forward without it, though. The only ways forward were to dark for him to see. Without the night vision mode on his camera, the best he could do was feel his way around. His hands were already hurt, however, and if he fucked them up even worse…

He could also run into the twins. Or Walker. Or he could drop through one of the many holes burned into the ground himself, or-

Damnit!

He’d come so far. Too far. He’d lost two of his _fucking_ fingers too far. He couldn’t just give up now, could he? But… He couldn’t find his way through the asylum without his camera. And it was _gone-_

No.

_No._

There was a door on the floor below him. If that led down, he might be able to find his camera. He’d need a good sense of where he was in comparison to this room, but he could manage that well enough. If there was any chance that his camera was still working, he needed to find it. The camera was his lifeline. Without it, he was fucked beyond all believe.

He sighed and let himself slide down the broken and curved wood he had just desperately scrabbled up. He landed easily on his feet and walked off the light tingling as he headed to the door.

Frankly, he only had two choices. He had to get his camera back or die in the attempt. And whichever ended up happening, at least nobody would be able to say the Miles Upshur was a quitter.


	12. 4. Hate

Just when it seemed like it had killed _everyone_ who posed a threat to its host, another irritating _pest_ had appeared to make its life even more difficult.

It had been keeping an eye on this particular man ever since the moment he had slammed a door in its ‘face’. Most of the people in the asylum either froze upon seeing it, or simply ran away from it. This was… a much more _unique_ reaction. Which made sense. That particular human had arrived at the asylum after it had awoken from its half-formed state into the fully sentient creature it was now. It had even used the man as bait to catch an especially dangerous individual that was planning on harming its host.

It had _planned_ to let him live, but the pest had to go and talk to _Wernicke_ of all people. Its hatred of scientist proved to be well founded when he gave the order to have its host killed. Oh yes, it heard every word the ancient man said. After all- its host had used it to keep the man alive, feeling like he was a father figure.

It had been _right_ to _hate_ him.

Wernicke could wait, though. It had to get rid of this pest first. The pest was already beginning to slowly break down the things around the chamber where its host was. It was reluctant to admit that the man was clever, though… he _had_ escaped it twice already through those damn quarantine gates. It had wasted too much time trying to find a way around them.

Not anymore.

Now… Now it was going to play this game just as deviously as this man had been.

It waited, patiently. It hovered just under the eleven-story high gap. The stairs it led too were the only safe way down. It waited patiently as the man returned and judged the distance, knowing he wouldn’t see it tucked into the shadows. Right as he reached the height of his jump, it lunged for him and grabbed him.

The man screamed and flailed, trying to break free of the creature. It didn’t have any mercy for the man who was trying to kill its hose, though. It threw him down and watched him fall, gleefully buzzing as the man landed, bounced, and only them came to a rest. There! He was dead! He would never be able to-

…

_How was the_ pest _still walking?_

It dove down after him as he got to his feet and bolted, showing a resilience that was both impressive and frustrating to the creature. It chased him all the way back to where Bill was, but it couldn’t reach the man before he reached Billy. The man slammed his hand onto a glowing panel and looked up to stare it down. It saw fear in his eyes, yes, but beyond that was triumph and spite, and just the faintest hint of the madness that infected the entire place.

It dove to the bubble that contained it’s host first- if it could just fix him, if it could reverse all the things the pest had done, it would be fine. Everything would be just fine. It reached forward, it’s nanoparticles trying to seep in through the glass and failing when it felt something…

Wrong.

Billy was _gone._ The mental link that had existed between them from its moment of existence was broken, and it didn’t know where it went. It was-

… Alone?

Was that what this horrible feeling was?

There was _no_ echo of the boy’s reassuring presence. No anger or sorrow lurking in the back of its mind for a lost mother. It didn’t have those feelings, not without a host to share them with it.

And then…

A few particles, the weakest ones at the very edges of its trail began to die and fall away. It felt a single emotion rise above all the others swirling around in its much too empty mind.

Fear.

It dove back to the pest who had done this to it- to them- and slammed him down before mindlessly throwing him toward the far wall and listening to his cries of pain. It felt a sadistic sense of satisfaction. Fear was being fought with by anger, and anger was winning, for just a brief period. How dare this pest- this creature that was little more than a cockroach to it- how _dare_ he even _think_ that it would allow this.

It grabbed the man up and prepared the one thing that it knew would kill even this disgustingly tenacious human- the explosion that would rain down chunks of flesh and bone and blood everywhere, the only suitable way it could think to vent this burning rage and it-

…

It stopped.

It had always felt a connection to Billy Hope. Nobody else had come close to matching it. This man, though…

It could _feel_ things from him. From his mind. It wasn’t at all like Billy’s had been. This man was broken but defiant, a paradoxical creature that it wanted to hate… but there was something open and warm and welcoming about the man’s mind. He was still struggling to get out of the creature’s grip, but beyond that…

It still sank into his skin, through the muscles and flesh and bones, dropping the man as it focused more on testing this feeling, on digging into his cells and seeing if they would respond.

The change was almost instant. The first few cells it touched shuddered and shifted beneath it, changing from what they should have been to the tiny cellular factories that would produce its nanoparticles. It took care not to change too man (had that been while Billy was so fragile? It had changed too many of his cells?) and instead began to study the man himself.

Physically, he was almost beyond repair. Between the broken right leg, the shattered lungs, the half-cauterized wounds on his hands, and the bone shards that stabbed into his lungs which were slowly filling with blood. It couldn’t believe the man was actually still alive.

… But he got up. Again. Miles- it could see the pest’s name now- slowly pushed himself to his feet. Ha-ha. This human was downright impossible to kill, wasn’t he? But that fact didn’t bother it now. No, that was a very _good_ thing now. It set to work, moving thing and adjusting them, removing shards from his lungs and healing the tissues underneath to stop them from filling with blood. It forced the bone in his leg back together and began to carefully build the bone back together. It stitched him back up fixed the damage that it had to admit was mostly its fault and let itself be flooded with sensory input.

If this man was this hard to kill, he would make an _excellent_ host.


	13. 7. Wrecked

Miles had no idea what the extent of his injuries was. He was laying on the ground with a pod full of blood and body next to him, and a broken camera full of secrets in his hands. His mangled, eight fingered hands. He could go over then while he was trying to get the energy to lift himself up, he supposed.

His leg was broken. He was sure of that. The limb was twisted back and to the side at an angle that wasn’t natural. It could be anything from a single break to a whole shattered bone, but he had no idea of the extent. All he knew was the sight of it made him sick.

There was an extraordinarily painful feeling in his side. If he had the energy to cough, he’d probably be trying to clear his lungs out. Had… a rib punctured one of them? … That was the only thing he could think of. They’d been cracked since he was five minutes in this shithole. If that was right, there was no way that he could get medical attention before he bled to death from the inside.

The majority of his body hurt so badly that it made getting his fingers cut off feel more like a trip to the pharmacy to get a flu shot, and the only thing that it could mean was that… he was dying.

Damnit. _Damnit._ How had he gone through all of that, pushed through everything else that had happened to him, only to die at the end. Freedom was so close at hand, and yet… he was laying there dying, gasping softly like a fish out of water. He didn’t want his last breaths to be taken down beneath a mountain, where Murkoff would destroy his camera, his evidence, and burn his body like they’d burned everything else. He didn’t want that, but what choice did he have?

…

No.

No. No no no no no.

Hell to the goddamn fucking _no._

He was not going to die down there. He was going to die, sure. He had no doubts about that. But if this was going to be his last day on Earth, like hell it would end there.

He pulled himself to his feet and the pain doubled in magnitude. He couldn’t bring himself to care, though. All pain meant was that something was wrong with his body, and he was beyond knowing that, so what did it matter?

He was going to die, but he would die outside underneath the sun, and not a goddamn moment earlier.


	14. 17. Acceptance

Everything hurt.

Everything hurt, and he wanted it to stop.

He was letting himself rest for just a moment to gather back some of his strength. He had to get back up soon, even though everything in his body protested it. His own body was broken and beaten so badly that he could almost feel Death’s presence urging him to give up and rest, but he just wanted to escape. He wanted to breath one last gulp of free air.

…

He was so tired.

He forced himself to his feet once again, grabbing up his camera and stumbling to the next handholds to pull himself forward. He couldn’t walk well. Every movement he made sent pain shooting up through his broken leg, and he was frustrated at the crawl that he was forced to adopt to make any progress. He’d ran across this lab in minutes before, but now he could only inch his way along.

If he stopped moving, maybe he could-

No, he couldn’t.

He had to _keep_ moving. He had to get away. Even though death was sure in his mind, he didn’t want to die down there. He wanted to die outside of this museum of everything wrong with humanity. Was that so wrong?

He groaned and fell to a knee. The non-broken one, thankfully. Maybe if he just rested up a little bit, he could… he could…

It was tempting to just lay there and sleep. It was the most tempting thing that he’d ever come across. He could rest and regain some energy before trying to continue climbing out of the pit.

Part of him knew, though, that if he rested… he would never get up again. He would be left to rot there. He took a deep breath and forced himself to his feet, forced himself to keep going. The large door was there, and beyond that were halls and a pathway that led to the outside. It opened and beyond that-

_Bang!_

The shot hit him in the shoulder and he staggered back. The pain registered immediately even over everything else wrong with his battered body. He wasn’t sure if his life was beginning to flash before his eyes at was so often spoken about in the moments just before death, but it did seem to slow down.

In his mind, that static crackled and cleared. In his mind, it started to speak.

_“I can help you,”_ whispered a voice that flowed through his head like water, cooling his fevered mind and thought. _“All you have to do is let me.”_

How, he wondered. Not how would it help, but how _could_ he let it help? … The guns were lifting, slowly, as though through molasses. Maybe it would be better if he just-

_“Do_ not _give up,”_ the voice growled. _“Fight! Just keeping fighting, Miles. Keep fighting and let me help you. Let me in.”_

Fine, he thought. Fine. Help me, do whatever you need to do, and I won’t stop fighting either, just…

_Help me._

That was when they opened fire. He felt the bullets tear through him, and he landed on the ground, hard. His eyes closed, and he could feel the blood draining from his body and yet he couldn’t give up. Not if he wanted to have any hope at living. He grabbed onto whatever essence he could and held onto that dear little flame.

“Gott in Himmel,” a voice sounded from very far away. “You have become the host.”

Everything went black to the sound of the Walrider’s screech.


	15. 68. Energetic

The soldiers fucked up. The Walrider let out a loud screech as it tore most of itself away from its new host and dove for the first soldier it could reach- it didn’t even get the chance to blow the man up from the inside, though. His fellow soldiers did all the work for it.

They trailed their guns onto the Swarm and fired, but the bullets went straight through and into the soldier behind it. It buzzed angrily and grabbed onto one of the soldiers, slamming him into another.

The group hadn’t been informed of its presence. Why should they have been? Wernicke thought it was destroyed. So not a single one of them were prepared to deal with it. It ripped through them like they were paper dolls, leaving the scientist for last.

It wanted him to know the pain that Billy had experienced when the pes- when Miles started to destroy his lift support. It wanted the man to know exactly what was going to happen to him.

Wernicke no longer feared death. But that didn’t mean he didn’t fear _pain._

Once it had taken care of all the distractions, it turned back to its host. Miles was very much unconscious- his mind had finally reached the point of pain stress and fear where it simply couldn’t take anymore and shut down. He was breathing, though, and his bleeding was almost stopped.

It had left some particles behind to patch up what it could. First came stemming the blood, and now… now it could work at forcing the skin and muscle to repair itself as quickly as possible.

Still, it couldn’t just leave him down there. It had to get him somewhere safer. It was simple enough to wrap itself around the man and hoist him up, carrying him much like it would drag people around before destroying them. This time, though, it was careful. It did its best not to jostle the man as it carried him back the way he had come, back to the elevator.

It was locked into position, but that didn’t stop a creature that could fly. It took less then a second to break the panel leading up open, and then it was going up. The emptiness it felt coming from Miles was distressing- had it hurt the man so badly that its repairs were too late?

It got to the ground level floor and set him down, mentally prodding him. The man let out a small groan, and it felt relief rush through it. Good. It hadn’t completely destroyed the man- neither had the storm of bullets.

It was about to hoist him up again when it heard something. Shouting, of some sort. It flexed its particles. If nothing else, it knew one thing very, very well.

It knew how to get rid of people it deemed a danger to its host.


	16. 73. Pity

It recognized the man with the glass shard in his hand in a moment. Jeremy Blair.

From what it gathered from the many, many minds it had skimmed through, Blair was a dangerous man to those who didn’t kowtow to him, and even some that did. He was cold and uncaring about anyone but himself. It was no chemical imbalance, either- He was just a horrible creature.

It felt nothing as it yanked him high into the air and listened to him scream and swear, demanding answers from people who were long dead. He had survived, somehow, since the Asylum had fallen. A remarkable feat.

Still. He should have left when he had the chance.

It dug into his body, particles slipping through him like water leaking through a coffee filter, curling itself tightly down so that all of it could fit.

And once it had absorbed into the man, it expanded rapidly. The resulting explosion of flesh and blood and bone was so satisfying-

There was another man there- it almost dove down at him as well, but…

A couple of things made it pause.

The man was injured. There was almost no chance of him being a threat to its host because of that fact alone- he was cowering beneath the Walrider, and it would be unsurprised if a slight breeze were enough to stop him in his tracks. He was unarmed, save for…

A camera.

The other reason that it watched without harming the man as he pushed his battered body to his feet was not brought from logic. When it took Miles as its host, it had been flooded with memories. The most recent were all so very similar.

Fear. Pain. Clutching his camera for dear life.

…

It couldn’t bring itself to target this creature who reminded it of its host. It simply couldn’t. It let him hobble away, returning to where it had hidden its host and scooping him up again.

It still had to get him out of there, after all. His wounds were mostly tended too- it was sure he would live- but…

It knew enough about him already to know he would _not_ be happy to wake up still in the Asylum.


	17. 90. Relief

Miles Upshur woke up in the grass, and his first thought was that he had to be dead.

He had to be, didn’t he? Miles was certain that there was no other explanation for how he had managed to get out of what he could only call Hell. His memories were dime, clouded by a refusal to acknowledge the pain that he had jut suffered through, but he grabbed them and tried to force them into order anyway.

The last thing he remembered was… The Walrider, picking him up and throwing him around like a rag down, absorbing into his body and then ceasing to be. That was in the lap beneath the mountain, though, and that hadn’t been what drove him to the idea that he must be dying. He had managed to hoist himself up and pull himself along until-

One hand reached to his chest, though he wasn’t sure what it was he was trying to find evidence of. His brain just knew that there must be evidence of what happened to him, somewhere. He felt holes on his shirt, and have dried, sticky- … blood? Was that blood?

He looked down to see and as he did, he was distracted by his missing finger. Not the fact that it was gone- he knew it would be- but the fact that it didn’t hurt. It was still red, and blood stained but wiping off the blood revealed old scar tissue. It was healed over.

… He should be upset by the sight of it, but instead there was a dull sense of resignation as his mind urged him to look to his shirt. Yes, that was blood, and his shirt was riddled with singed holes. Bullet holes?

That sounded right. He remembered being shot at, now, that was coming back. How he had survived and managed to get out of the asylum and onto a patch of grass was entirely a blank.

He felt no pain. Not only from his fingers, but his chest didn’t hurt either. He could only find small bumps where the bullets must have hit him, his fingers were healed over and-

Half impulsively and half instinctively he inhaled, filling his lungs until he couldn’t draw air anymore, before exhaling it and setting it free. His lungs were working perfectly- better then perfectly, in fact.

He had to be dead. Right? There was no way that he could have survived long enough while unconscious to be healed that much, right? The wounds were all months old, and-

A sudden loud noise interrupted his train of thought and he grabbed his camera and staggered to his feet, looking for a place to hide before it sounded again, and he realized-

It was his stomach. The noise was it protesting angrily the fact that it had been so long since he’d eaten. How long? Since before he had arrived at Mount Massive, which was about…

He glanced down at his hands again, at the scar tissues that covered what, last time he’d seen them, were two nubs that showed muscle and bone. If he was hungry, did that mean… That he was alive? The man rolled up one of the sleeves of his jacket and punched the skin of his harm between his nails. It hurt- it was almost nothing compared to the pain from before- and that meant… that he was alive, right?

Somehow. Somehow against all logic, reason, and probably a few laws of physics, he had survived. Not only had he survived, but he wasn’t injured, and to top it all off, he was _free._

He started to laugh, at that moment of realization. It was like some sort of awful cosmic joke, wasn’t it? Some kind of game or something that whatever bullshit god existed was enjoying putting him through, and now, where was he? Down, two fingers? Plus, some nasty Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? And he- He couldn’t stop laughing.

He clutched his broken and drained camera and the precious memory card it held inside it to his chest and he laughed. It was hysterical laughter that he couldn’t control, the kind of laughter that erupted out of the body and didn’t have an end in sight, though nothing was funny, nothing about any of this was funny and oh god he couldn’t breathe, the laughter was all consuming and he couldn’t-

Until he could.

His chest caught mid laugh and the laugh turned to a few sharp coughs, and then he was dragging air into his tired and over worked lungs. His frantic breathing was interrupted only by his stomach growling loudly once again, demanding he stop this foolishness and get food.

… Anything else could wait until after he got food.


	18. 16. Horror

He had to keep moving. He had to move, to run, only stop to hide from the noises that chased him. That was all he could do, so that was all he did.

He wasn’t sure how exactly how long it had been since he’d woken up outside of Mount Massive Asylum- He had tried to make his way back home, but without his car, he wasn’t getting anywhere fast. He walked along the side of the road for most of the day, trying to figure out the way back without his GPS, which was back in his currently very missing jeep.

He had just passed through a town, and he had been fully planning on stopping and resting, only-

_Metal against metal._

Left right left right one foot in front of the other. The burn in his legs, the gasping for air, the staggering around in the dark didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had his camera to navigate with, and he had to keep running, because _somebody_ was after him. It was Walker with his chains, or Trager, with his giant scissors, one of the two of them-

_“It is neither of them,”_ some small part of his mind murmured to him, logical in its reasoning but completely drowned out by the panic of flight or fight. _“They are both dead, so neither of them are chasing you. Nothing is chasing you, in fact.”_

But there was _always_ something there. Every time he could pretend for a moment that he was safe and try to figure out a way back to normal from where he left off, something would be there to laugh and tell him just how wrong he was.

So, he ran.

He ran with no idea where he was going, no idea where he was running, until he took a step, and nothing was underneath him.

He screamed as he fell, gravity wrapping its hands around him and dragging him down, the wind whipping through his hair, trying, and failing to pull him back up. The longer he fell, the more certain he was that he was going to die, smashed against whatever was at the bottom of his fall, and he could only hope it would be quick-

Something else wrapped around him- no, _encased_ him entirely. He slowed to a stop, and then gravity reversed. He flew back up through the very same empty space he had fallen through, and his confusion was short lived as he slowed to a stop and fell again- to land on the ground a second later.

How- How was he-?

He lifted up his camera to look through the comforting green filter and try and figure it out. He swept it across the area, and his blood ran cold as he froze on the only thing that could have stopped his fall.

His mind registered the humanoid shape that was only evident when it was right in your face, floating above the ground with legs sort of curled up. There was that twisted skull and that seemed to become more and more human as it leaned closer, the white dots that served as its eyes boring through the camera into his own-

He was running again.

He didn’t quite remember getting to his feet, or taking off, but now the land flew under his feet. It wasn’t technically impossible to run from the Walrider- he had managed before. Granted, he had the weird quarantine gates that it couldn’t get through, but he could still try.

Why was it here, though?

The Bastard Child of Magic and Science should have been destroyed with its host, not left free to run around and terrorize people. Had it been hunting him this entire time? Or, worse, had it been off indiscriminately killing people since it had gotten out of the asylum?

Something caught his foot and he fell, hard. The camera dug into the soft skin of his stomach, forcing the air out of his lungs and causing him to wheeze as he rolled over onto his back and gasped air back in. In the light of the moon, he could just see the hazy cloud hovering over him. Weight pressed down on his chest and he realized… there was no way to escape. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed that if this was some kind of revenge, it would take it quickly.

… It wasn’t doing anything, though. The pressure wasn’t increasing. If anything, it was just remaining at a constant. It was enough to keep him from actually getting up and bolting again, but it wasn’t enough to really hurt him. After a few more seconds, he opened his eyes, grabbed his camera, and flipped it back open to get a better look.

The… thing came into focus again. It was hovering above him with both hands firmly pressed down onto his chest. The two white pinpricks met his eyes through the camera again, but it didn’t lean forward, nor did it lean away. It wasn’t still, though. The hazy particles that surrounded it were constantly moving and shifting, but other than that, it wasn’t actually doing anything.

After a few seconds of staring, the creature slowly lifted its hands away, though it still didn’t move much.

Miles swallowed and slowly sat up. The Walrider shifted back to continue looking through the camera at him, but that was all it did. It didn’t lunge for him or try to sink into his skin and blow him up or throw him around, it just…

Watched.

For far too long, neither of them made any movements. It was only when the camera in his hand beeped a low battery warning that he realized the stalemate could not last forever. And when the glow of the camera left him blinking in the darkness, he’d be _easy_ prey for the Walrider. But… why was it waiting so long to attack him, then? Looking at him had never stopped it before.

“If you’re here to kill me, no need to draw it out. Just fucking get it over with.”

It tilted its head and there was a loud noise- some kind of cross between buzzing and humming. Miles didn’t know what to make of the sound- He had heard it screeching in anger before, but he had never heard it make this sound. What… was it?

And then that voice spoke again. That logical voice that sounded like how it felt to run water over your hands, that cooled him down whenever it echoed in his mind, with not even a trace of static around it anymore. That voice that tried to talk him out of his panic and failed.

It spoke to him. And it sounded almost… amused?

_“If I had wanted to kill you, Miles, I have had ample opportunity. Besides, what would I gain from killing my host?”_

“…” He set the camera with the now dead battery down beside him and closed his eyes again, dropping his face into his hands and sighing, heavily. “Alright. This is a dream. I’m dreaming. Just another really fucked up dream, right?”

_“This is not a nightmare.”_ He felt something brush his skin, and then a faint and unpleasant tingling. He remembered it vaguely from Mount Massive, when the thing had sunk into his body, and he shuddered at the thought of it. After a few seconds, he forced himself back to his feet and began to walk again. His legs muscles were still burning from all the running he had been doing and being forced to sit still had tightened them up. The first few steps before they loosened up were painful, but it wasn’t like it was the worst thing he’d ever felt.

Far from it.

What had he even been running from? Now that he was a bit calmer, he forgot-

_“A phantom, and nothing more.”_

He knew that. He knew what it wasn’t. And he guessed that whatever it was that made the noise didn’t matter in the long run.

_“Both of them are dead,”_ it continued in a tone he couldn’t quite place. _“You killed Trager. And I killed Walker.”_

“I remember.” All too vividly in fact. “I thought you were going to kill me right after you killed him, you know. I mean, you had just been chasing me, and-“

_“You were not much of a threat at that point,”_ it replied before he could finish the thought. It spoke a bit quieter then it had been before. _“He, on the other hand, was. He also seemed to have taken a keen interest in following you. I figured that if I sent you back the way you came, you would lead me to him. I was right, was I not?”_

He hated to admit it was right…

But, well, it was right.

He switched the batteries in his camera to study the path as he walked. “Why me? Why’d you pick me to be your new host? … Was it because I was the closest person after-”

He opted not to mention Billy, before realizing that just thinking of the man’s name would still be ‘heard’ by the Walrider. Damnit.

For a long few minutes it did not reply to the question. And though he did not think that the thing would kill him, he had no idea what other kind of revenge it _could_ take. Finally, though, it responded, keeping its ‘voice’ soft. As if it were trying to be… soothing?

Was it trying to keep him calm?

_“Not entirely,”_ it finally murmured. _“That was only a small portion of it. Tell me… Do you know what must happen before I can take a host? … Yes, the answer just came to your mind. Someone must see true horror, experience something that pushes them to the apparent brink of death and opens them up to allowing anything if they can just… survive. Most humans are very closed off to change, but thanks to your… experiences… you would have agreed to almost anything to live. You_ were _the only suitable host near, and with your will to live- Did you know, I killed many, many humans that. You were the only one I actively hunted to get away from me.”_

He felt a strange rush of pride at the statement, but he brushed it off as he continued walking, trying to figure out where to go from there. He was half distracted with the camera as he walked, both to try and prolong the amount of time it would take before what was going on sunk in, and to get the burn out of his muscles.

“So… what are you going to do after _I_ die? I doubt that I’ll be near anyone who else who’s experienced such true horror that they’ll be a good host, so…”

There was the buzz and hum against his skin, and he realized in that moment that the noise was this strange creature’s version of _laughter._

_“You won’t.”_

He understood the meaning, but his mouth opened and said, “I know I won’t be around a suitable host. That’s why I’m asking.”

He wasn’t aware that he had stopped walking. “What are you going to do when I die?”

_“No, Miles. Don’t play stupid with me- I can tell you understand my meaning.”_

“… I know you won’t let anyone kill me,” he stated, trying to keep his breathing even. “But I’m going to die of old age, aren’t I? Or- what if I die of sickness?”

_“You won’t,”_ it repeated. _“And I don’t think you understand. You are_ mine, _Miles. I will not let any_ thing _kill you, not just anyone. It took me a few hours to fix the wound you picked up in the asylum, so how long do you think it would take me to pinpoint any disease and eradicate it? How much effort do you think it would take something like me to destroy or rewire any cell that dares show its imperfection? You, Miles, are going to live for a very, very long time.”_

He was standing perfectly still, but only barely. His legs were shaking, and if not for the particle cloud that formed a second hazy skin around him, he probably would have fallen over. Images ran through his head and his breath caught in his throat as he remembered.

“No!” He shook his arms, brushing the haze away, and the Walrider got the message and appeared in front of him. He crossed his arms and shook his head.

 “I- I don’t want to end up like Wernicke! I don’t want to be hooked up to a bunch of machines to survive and-”

_“Miles.”_

“He was only like… ninety. And he couldn’t- What am I supposed to do when I get that old? I couldn’t do my job like that- Or- Or what about when I’m older!? ‘Cause you’re telling me that you’re going to keep me alive for-”

_“Miles!”_

“-even longer, and-”

There was a soft noise, almost like a resigned sigh, followed by the Walrider grabbing him by the shoulders, leaning forward, and giving off the loudest screech that he had ever heard from it. The sound that meant the Walrider was beyond pissed, the same screeched that it had used as he broke down Billy’s life support, the same noise that echoed in his mind with the words _you have become the host._

He immediately shut up.

_“Wernicke,”_ Walrider began, without moving from its position. _“He was not my host. I did not particularly care for him, but at Billy’s request- and only at Billy’s request- I kept him functioning._ Functioning. _I do not plan on keeping you simply functioning, Miles. I plan on keeping you_ alive.”

The man forced himself to take deep breaths. This was so… He couldn’t think of how to describe it, and describing things was what he did for a living.

“So… You’re trying to make me immortal?”

_“Yes.”_

“… Can I… Can I have some time to think about that?”

_“Of course, Miles. All the time in the world.”_


	19. 63. Tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new character arrives, and boy is he tired.

He didn’t get paid enough for this.

Jayce Hale was a very average person, or so he liked to think. He worked the night shift of a convivence store with a tiny pharmacy in the back that sold a little bit of everything. It was a decent job but considering how many weirdos showed up at three in the goddamn morning, sometimes he wished he’d chosen the sensible option and just tried to get the morning shift.

But _no._ Instead, he was stuck waiting behind the counter by himself while one of the weirdest damn people he had ever seen shifted through their meager clothing stock.

The man had dark brown hair and darker eyes. He looked… unhealthy pale, as if he hadn’t seen the sunlight in years. That was what he would have liked to focus on, really, but that was secondary. His eyes get drifting to the man’s chest.

The shirt might have been white once upon a time, but it was red now. It stuck to the man like a t-shirt stuck to someone after they had gotten stuck in a downpour with no umbrella. The coppery smell that hit him when he’d walked by made it clear exactly what liquid he was drenched in. Even his four fingered hands were covered in blood. Or, at least… they had been. He’d taken some of the hand sanitizer on the counter and scrubbed it away.

Jayce not-very-subtly watched as the man finally sighed and grabbed a shirt and a pair of sweatpants and headed up to the front. He almost hoped that the guy would just walk out with them. He did _not_ want to screw with someone covered in the much blood and still moving. But… the man dropped the clothes in front of the cash register.

Jayce refused to make contact as he rang up the clothes and stuffed them in a plastic bag. Still… he couldn’t help but nothing something on the man’s hand. It wasn’t more blood. It was almost like some weird, dark dust. He’d have assumed it was dirt, but the hand sanitizer would have cleaned it off.

…

The strangest part was that it almost seemed to move.

“Scuse me?”

He was snapped out of his distraction by the firm sort of tone that meant this was at least the third time the man asked and glanced up at him. The guy seemed… tired, more than anything. Maybe it was just the extra pale tone, but the bags under his eyes looked heavy.

“Yes! Sorry, ah- … Did you want your receipt?”

“Yeah. And the key to the bathroom.”

Why couldn’t this man just leave? Maybe it was some weird ass early Halloween prank. He just handed the key over to avoid causing any trouble and watched the man shuffle back towards the bathroom, shaking his head slightly and pretending to clean the counter until the door closed.

He glanced back up when he heard the door open and… to the guy’s credit, he looked much less like a creep when he walked back out in clean clothes. He still looked beyond exhausted, though. But… without the blood stains, he looked… almost broken.

Jayce bit the inside of his cheek and sighed. There was still a bit of hot food left over from the last batch, and it wasn’t like anyone tended to come to a convenience store at three in the morning for food. Not when there was a perfectly good Taco Bell across the street.

While the man tried to wrestle his unruly jacked into the shopping back with the rest of his other clothing, Jayce prepared a little serving of stuff. Not much, really- just a couple pieces of pizza, really. He grabbed a five-hour energy drink and, as the man walked by the counter to get to the door, he slid them forward.

The man jumped and turned, eyes suddenly wide and very aware. Jayce flinched- shit, had he done something to set him off? And what the fuck was that _noise?_ It sounded almost like a buzzing, but it was coming from the weird guy. Shit. He had fucked up-

The man glanced down at the food and the tiny drink and understanding replaced whatever wild look had been there before. The buzzing died down as he glanced back up, tired eyes meeting Jayce’s.

“… Er. No offence meant, dude… You just kinda look like shit, y’know? I can get this stuff for you. Just… take care, yeah?”

There was a flash of a smile, although it didn’t seem to be cheerful. It looked like he was smirking at some kind of inside joke that Jayce didn’t really understand yet, but he nodded and offered a quick thank you before he vanished out the door.

Jayce just sighed as he keyed in the items and paid for them, so there wouldn’t be any discrepancies.

He didn’t get paid enough for this bullshit.


	20. 56. Glad

He had lost track of how long he had been walking and hitchhiking until he had finally gotten back to his apartment.

But here he was.

The rooms were small and cluttered, his bed unmade with sheet half off and blanket bunched up into the side where he had kicked when he woke up the day he left. There was a musty smell from the trash he hadn’t been able to take out, and a set of dirty clothes were still bunch up in the corner. A half empty bottle of whiskey rested on a table next to his computer set up, a very thin layer of dust laying over the usually well-kept machine.

He walked through the room- part of him wanted to just throw himself on the bed and sleep for a week. Still, another and louder part knew how grungy he was, and he wanted to feel clean. So, he pushed his aching and tired body just a little bit more.

He walked into the bathroom and peeled off the cheap convenience store clothing and left them on the floor. He glanced up and-

Froze.

…

He was staring at a man with dark hair and darker eyes- gaunt cheeks that spoke of suffering and hunger. The man’s chest was littered with marks. Perfect little circles, smaller then the coins in his pocket, dotted his chest like a bizarre scatter graph. Ribs were visible, and he wondered if he looked close enough whether or not he could see the breaks.

He knew it was only his reflection he was seeing, but… it felt like he was looking at a totally different person.

 _“Don’t do this to yourself,”_ whispered the cool rational part of hi-

… No. It wasn’t part of him. He knew that it was just the Walrider speaking to him, and he spun away from the mirror and turned on the shower.

He made the water hot, so hot that it seemed to burn when he stepped under it. Maybe he made it that way to try and get the cool voice out of his head- no, he knew that was impossible. Maybe he just… wanted to feel clean. _Really_ clean.

He scrubbed his hair and his body until every part of him was red and raw, but clean. The Walrider was buzzing disapprovingly, but he was too tired to care. He didn’t even bother pulling clothes on or drying off. He just dropped into his bed and let his tired, aching body finally shutting down somewhere he felt… almost safe.

…

He slept hard when he could manage, but some animal instinct part of his brain kept prodding him to wake up just long enough to make sure he was safe, jolting him awake every couple of hours.

It wasn’t until the fifth time or so that he wondered how when the light had turned off, or how he had wound up under the formerly crumpled blanket. He was too tired to question it much, though- choosing instead to drift off to a strange, soothing hum.


	21. 81. Degraded

When he had first become aware of the Walrider, he had been… frightened. He barely understood what it wanted. After all, the last time he’d been aware of it, the thing had been trying to kill him- slowly and painfully.

… It was hard to try and match that with this version of it.

He was still in bed. He didn’t want to get out, not now that he was finally safe. Besides, the blanket was warm and being asleep meant he didn’t have to deal with things like actually working on editing the video of his absolute nightmare of a trip.

Part of him wanted to just destroy the footage and pretend it didn’t exist. It would be better that way, so much better. He couldn’t, though. That would make it have all been for nothing.

He could deal with it later, though. He could deal with everything later-

_“… You need to get up, Miles.”_

There was _that_ too.

“Don’t want too,” he muttered. He was tempted to add a ‘and you can’t make me,’ but-

_“You know I_ could _make you.”_

“Eugh. Knock off the minding reading thing. It’s annoying.”

There was a slight pause before the voice spoke again. _“I can try to stop, but it’s not something I’m trying to do. Regardless. You need to get up.”_

“Why?”

_“Because you haven’t eaten or drank anything for… a while, now.”_

He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. Not like it would actually get him away from the creature, but it still made him feel better. It was petty, sure, but he felt he earned a little bit of pettiness.

“And you care about whether or not I have a balanced diet?”

_“I care about whether or not you starve yourself to death.”_

He mentally rolled his eyes, but he tossed the blanket off. Instantly, the cold air his body and he winced. Right.

Getting up was even harder. His body had finally shifted down from fight and flee mode back down into a hesitant ‘things are okay’ mode, and it did _not_ feel nice. All of his limbs had the sort of soreness that only came with pushing one’s body to its limits, and then pushing it a little bit more. He tried to take a step, but ended up nearly falling over- The only reason he didn’t was a pair of hazy hands grabbing him and pulling him back up. As soon as he was back on his feet, he yanked himself away- choosing instead to grab onto the wall and use that to guide him.

_“I can help you,”_ it stated. _“If you just let me-”_

“No thanks. I can do this myself.”

The first step proved to be the worst. The next couple allowed him to get more used to using his legs again- they hurt, but compared to what he had been through in the asylum, this was nothing. First step was to get some actual clothes on. Next… The food issue. 

He obviously hadn’t shopped since he got home, so he didn’t trust any of the perishables in the fridge. He had some canned food, though, so he just grabbed some soup and dumped it rather unceremoniously into a bowl. It was easy enough to put that in the microwave and call it a meal.

Something to drink. He had water, old storm provisions. That would work. He went to pick up a bottle and-

_Pain._ Gallon bottles were not kind on his body. He immediately brushed off the Walrider’s attempts to help, gritted his teeth, and hoisted the bottle up.

_“You’re hurting yourself. I can easily carry that-”_

“Who was the one who wanted me out of bed?” He snapped, and almost immediately felt the creature recoil. He was actually somewhat baffled by the reaction, and he felt… a little bit bad.

He shook that off, though. The sooner he got all this together, the sooner he could get back to bed- back to trying to sleep off his trauma. And… the sooner he could avoid thinking about _this._


	22. 39. Pessimistic

His future seemed rather bleak.

It stretched out into the distance with the Walrider’s promise of keeping him alive. Way out. He wasn’t sure just how long it could manage to keep that promise. Still. It must have learned from Billy.

Even his journalism career was up in the air. He had always, _always_ been the kind of journalist to do whatever it took- not just to get a story. The bullshit of story first truth second had been exactly why he’d tanked his job and became a freelance journalist. No- he did whatever it took to get the truth. And he had gotten… More than his share of it.

He flexed his hands, looking down at the missing spaces where his fingers used to be. There were little bright patches, he supposed. If he did manage to get over what had happened at Mount Massive, he would never have to worry about getting screwed up that bad again.

After all. The Walrider wouldn’t allow it.

Was it worth it, though? There would be so many difficulties from what it wanted to do. No normal person could live as long as the Walrider said it would make him live. Wernicke had to fake his death, and he didn’t want to do that, but…

Well.

He might not have a choice.

He would have to watch his friends die. Any friends he made- let alone any partners he might have. He would have to move, often, so that nobody would get suspicious. Especially if Walrider ever had to actually protect him.

He didn’t know how he was going to deal with it.

…

Well. Good thing he had ‘all the time in the world’ to figure it out.


	23. 40. Optimistic

It had so much to learn.

It had always been dimly aware that there was a world outside the lab. It had seen fragmented memories of _outside_ from all of the people’s whose minds it had glimpsed, had known that its corner of the world was only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.

Knowing something, it found out, was very different from actually experiencing it.

Now that it had gotten to actually see the outside, it… well, it was excited. There was so much more to see.

It… was very much aware of what it was made to be. It had looked into the minds of the scientists, after all. It knew that they wanted to use it to make money, something that humans seemed to idolize above just about anything else.

And that brought it to its current host.

Miles, thus far, hadn’t really decided to use it for anything. He was actively avoiding thinking about it. It… wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It really wasn’t sure what most of the things it was feeling were, honestly.

But that was the thing- out here, it could learn. Out in the world, it could learn and figure out what all these things were. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

It was hard to tell. Miles… wasn’t big on small talk, after all. He much rather preferred to just do his own activities and pretend like it wasn’t there. It helped- by staying quiet unless it felt like it needed to speak.

It… didn’t enjoy that part, so much. It would have greatly preferred that the man actually acknowledge it, but… There was time for that. It didn’t have any reason to think that, over time, he wouldn’t get used to things.


	24. 65. Neglect

It watched Miles.

It had to watch him- he was its host, and it had to keep him alive.

Which… was _very_ hard to do when he didn’t act like he _wanted_ to be alive.

_“Miles. You haven’t eaten in two days. Put down the camera, save the work, and go get some food.”_

The man rubbed his eyes and turned to stare at the swarm of nanoparticles. He didn’t look at all pleased about being interrupted, either- the narrowed eyes, the thin scowl. He held the glare for a moment before turning back to his work. He was editing the footage from Mount Massive- clearing the audio, censoring anything that could be used to track him down and brightening up some of the darker areas.

“I’m not hungry,” he muttered after a few moments, still slowly adjusting footage. The Walrider gave a low irritated buzz at the brush off, but the man had gotten used to it enough that it didn’t faze him.

_“You don’t feel hungry because you’ve been putting it off for so long that your body is assuming there is_ no _food, so it has shut off the response. I guarantee if you start making something, you’ll feel it again. Go get food.”_

“It’s only been a couple of days,” he muttered, refusing to look over at the Swarm. “I won’t die after just a couple of days.”

_“You might not die, but… Look- even if you’re worried about getting this done, you’re already moving much slower than you were two days ago. Your reaction time is slowing, you take longer to remember what actions you need to take on which segments of the video- it is clearly affecting you!”_

“It’s fine!” He didn’t mean to snap at the creature, but he… didn’t have the best temper when he hadn’t eaten in a while. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I will be just fine. I’ve gone longer without eating before.”

_“That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing!”_

“What’s it matter to you, anyway? Like I said, I’m not going to die. I-“

He stopped and stared. The Walrider had settled between him and the computer. He couldn’t see the screen anymore and, as such, couldn’t keep working.

“… Seriously?”

_“Miles. You need food. You also need something to drink- you’re becoming dehydrated, too. Even if you aren’t going to fall over dead in the next few minutes, your body needs nutrients and fluids.”_

“…” The man sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Move out of the way.”

_“Miles-“_

“I need to save it. Please. Just… move.”

The Walrider wasn’t sure if the man was really going to take a break, but it obediently moved out of the way. True to his word, Miles saved the progress he’d made and immediately backed the half-edited footage onto a thumb drive, right next to the original unedited footage.

Only once everything was saved did he stand up- swaying a bit unsteadily- and grab his jacket. He yanked it on and walked outside, the Walrider following and clinging onto Miles- sticking all of its ‘exposed’ nanoparticles to him like a second skin. It could sense him thinking about where to go get food, and it felt a moment of relief. It couldn’t _make_ him take care of himself- the man would never forgive it if it did- so all it could do was try and talk him into it.

… Its host could be such a damn _pest._


	25. 78. Goosebumps

He had tried to put at least minimal effort into keeping himself going- if only to get the Walrider off his back. He made sure to eat at least once a day, laid down for a few hours and maybe slept for one of them…

It got the thing to ease off the treating him like a petulant toddler, thing- Which was a start in getting this relationship to where _he_ wanted it (preferably, anything where he could pretend the thing didn’t actually exist) but it wasn’t… enough.

There were still times when he would find himself chasing a train of though and the creature would drag him out of it and throw him off. That was starting to get really irritating, especially when he was on a roll with the footage.

The footage… he was still working on it. Still editing it and perfecting it. He’d added some extra stuff to explain things, such as the part where his camera had fallen into a gaping hole and wound up a story down.

… He wished he could remove the Walrider, but… Frankly, he couldn’t. He could blur the Morphogenic Engine- the three or four lines of data- but he couldn’t remove the creature.

He settled for removing himself. Not actually, of course- but he purged any mention of himself, any hint about his identity. It would be safer for him that way. He even rerecorded most of the things he had narrated over the tape and edited it to disguise his voice.

He had to protect himself. The only other option was letting that _thing_ protect him, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want it to slaughter anyone else-

Something settled on his shoulders and he flinched. Right. Speak of the Bastard Child of Science and Magic, and it would appear.

“What do you want?”

_“… You seemed aggravated. I was attempting to calm you down. Humans require touch- don’t they?”_

“If you want to help me stay calm, you can do it by _not_ touching me.” A bit harsh, maybe, but the Walrider wasn’t all that great at subtly. It took only a second for the creature to remove itself from his shoulder. He sighed, shook his head, and rubbed his arms.

He was getting tired of dealing with this, but…

He was stuck with this life, now.


	26. 57. Stress

Though Miles had physically escaped from Mount Massive Asylum, escaping mentally was much more difficult. There were several things that would immediately set him off in a blind panic if he saw or heard them. Sometimes he even forgot his fingers were gone and flinched when he saw the empty spaces where they used to be. The worst effect on his mind were the nightmares.

He never used to dream much- or if he did, then he never used to _remember_ what he dreamed. Ever since Mount Massive, though… His mind tried to drag him back there every single fucking night, kicking and screaming, no matter how much he wanted to be free of that damn place. The Walrider did try to help him- Sometimes it would lure his mind into a dark room and keep him safe there, but… if he was already in the middle of a nightmare, he wouldn’t follow it, and it would have to wake him up to end the dream.

The problem was that he still needed sleep.

…

He was running down a hallway.

It wasn’t the fire time he had run this circle, but he hoped it would be the last. He hoped every time he ran the circle would be the last, though, and so far, he’d had no luck with that. The sound of scissors nipping at his heels was becoming uncomfortably familiar in a horrible sort of way, like a weird family member that your parents sat you with at get togethers.

He could handle this, though. He knew how to avoid the doctor now.

The same loop, over and over again.

He jumped on the old bed, landed hard and used to the force to spring himself up to grab onto blood coated vent. His mind uncheerfully imagined all the problems that came from sticking fresh wounds into strange blood, but as long as he could haul himself up there, he would be just-

A hand closed on his ankle and pulled, hard. Maybe he could have fought back if the vent hadn’t been so slippery, but as it was, he dropped back out far too easily. He landed half on the bed and half not, with the edge sharply driving into his side and sending alarm bells off in his mind. He was yanked again, until his body dropped the rest of the way to the ground.

Something grabbed a fistful of his hair and lifted his head up-

_Oh please, no-_

-before smashing it down, directly into the concrete.

In the next moment he was sitting down against something cold and metal. He tried to stand, but both his wrists and ankles were bound with straps. Immediately he began to struggle, but even that was useless- Whatever material was being used was much stronger than last time. Damn.

“Ah, Buddy! I see you’ve finally woken up.” Oh no. He immediately tried to struggle against the straps, but that was just as effective as it had been before. The man’s voice was as cheerful as ever, to the point where if you didn’t know what he was, he’d sound pleasant.

“You would not believe how hard it was to track you down.” Trager picked up a large saw and studied it, running a finger of the side of the blade as if to admire the rust covered tool. “But I can’t stand quitters. Or quitting. So, I thought, you know, the effort was worth. So glad you’re back and ready to get to work.”

He discarded the saw and picked up a familiar pair of scissors, and Miles tried to scream for help, but the noise caught in his throat and held fast. Who would help him anyway? The straps holding him still held firm as he fought.

“There, there. No need for that. You aren’t going to get away from me again, you slippery eel.” He patted Miles’ hand in a gesture of mock comfort. “But don’t worry. These are only temporary. I have a much more permanent solution.”

He reached down out of sight and the chair fell back, dropping his body down as if it were a bed. He couldn’t read Trager’s expression- Not through the mask that covered his mouth- but that was an extra sadistic tone of glee as the man touched his lower leg and ran his hand up to his knee.

“I made an amateur mistake last time. And that’s all right, you know. I’m still learning myself. But why go for the hands first? Nobody uses their hands to move around. It’s slow and ineffective. No, better to start with your legs.”

He brought the scissors down and pressed them against the fleshy part of his leg. “Let’s do something about these hamstrings, shall w-”

Before he could dig the scissors in, something grabbed him and threw him back against the wall and-

Miles’ eyes slammed open and his body spasmed. Where- where did-

He recognized the ceiling fan. And when he lifted his hand to brush sweat soaked hair out of his face, it moved easily and freely. He wasn’t tied up, he was at home in his bed.

Something brushed against his skin and settled down onto it, and a voice spoke in his head.

_“You’re okay,”_ The Walrider spoke, keeping its mental tone comforting, soothing. The familiar voiced flowed over him and washed away the last dregs of the nightmare. _“You’re okay now, I’m here. I’m here, nothing’s going to hurt you.”_

He sat up and rubbed his hands against his face before glancing at the clock. It was one in the morning and he wouldn’t be getting back to sleep. He would be beyond tired tomorrow but damn it all he was glad the Walrider decided to interfere when it had.


	27. 79. Worthless

He stared down at the camera in his hands.

He wanted to smash it, the SD card, and the flash drive. Smash them and burn them and bury the ashes.

He wanted to put the finished product out into the world. He wanted to tell people, to tell everyone about what those people had done.

Things were swimming around in his head, though. Thoughts and worries. Which would be worse, he wondered? To hide the fact that these fuckers had used and abused people who had just wanted to get some help in order to creature a super weapon?

Or to tell the world that it worked?

There were horrible people in the world. Murkoff was composed of a lot of them. If this footage went public, there were bound to be repeats- people with half an idea of what to do creating even more atrocities to try and get their own super weapon. Maybe some of them would even figure out how to. Seeing what the Walrider had been capable of with an injured host… 

It terrified him.

He also knew that there were truly good people in the world. Whoever had seen what the place was doing and decided it needed to be stopped, putting themself through god knew what just to try and spread the word. He saw horrible things in his job- but he also met people who were willing to do whatever it took to help others, even if it hurt themselves to do it.

…

He wanted to thing those people would be outraged. Hell, he wanted to think anyone would be outraged- but even otherwise good people would turn a blind eye to the abuse that occurred to the mentally ill.

… God. Why couldn’t he figure this out? He had never questioned this before. He had _never_ questioned sending the truth out before. It had always been such an easy decision. The truth needed to be out there. People were responsible for whatever they did with the information then.

It had been easy.

Now? Now it was hard. He had edited out any trace of the damn engine, but… They had figured it out once, hadn’t they? People could figure it out again with or without his help.

… More would try if they knew it _would_ work. He couldn’t do shit about the previous harm to those people- but if he published this video and people tried to recreate it- how many more individuals would be pushed under the metaphorical train?

On other cases, he could phone other journalists. People who knew the drill and could help. He didn’t have anyone like that-

_“Maybe you do,”_ whispered a voice in his mind. He jumped and looked around before realizing it was just the Walrider. He let out a small huff and shook his head. Get it together, Upshur.

“What’re you talking about?”

_“… There was someone else. While I was bringing you out of there. He… reminded me of you, and he wasn’t a threat, so I let him go. He left too.”_

“…” That was a chance. Beyond whether or not to publish, that was a chance to… to meet someone who had lived through the same hell he did. “Tell me about him.”

_“… He had a camera, like you. And one of the executives tried to kill him. He did get out, though- he was injured, but there was a vehicle outside.”_

He wasn’t surprised the other person to escape had been the one to steal his jeep. And he could use that. He headed back to his computer, cracked his neck, and started composing some emails. He might not have many friends, but he had a _lot_ of connections.


	28. 92. Zest

He had it.

It had taken him a lot of research to get any information on the man, but he had finally managed.

Miles Upshur wasn’t the type to make a lot of friends. Journalism could be pretty damn cutthroat, so friends in the industry were rare. He did, however, have plenty of connections. It had taken five favors, but he had a name now.

Waylon Park.

And with a name, he managed to find little bits and pieces of information that built together an image of the man.

Up until somewhat recently, he and his family had been in a fair amount of debt. That had all vanished one day, though- and not long after they had moved to the mountains of Colorado.

It had to have been Murkoff stepping in. He kept at his digging and found more information. Most of it wasn’t very relevant, but then he found something that perked his interest.

A post. Legal questions, from one Lisa Park, about getting a diagnosis over turned. The diagnosis in question… Persecutorial delusions.

It had been the exact same thing given to- he dug through his notes. Right- David Annapurna. An orderly who had tried to get reassigned out of concern for the patients. Knowing what he did, he figured it was code for got too close to the truth or became an inconvenience and had to be shut up.

He knew Waylon had been some form of a patient- the figure that Walrider had seen was in an orange jumpsuit, like most of the other patients. And he knew that the man had also had a camera. Where ever he found it didn’t really matter. He had been filming the place- just like Miles himself had been.

He didn’t want to jump too conclusions, but part of him couldn’t help but wonder…

The man had been institutionalized on the same day that the email calling them there had been sent. Was it possible that this guy wasn’t just some employee who got too nosy, but… might be the actual Whistleblower?

It might be. He couldn’t get his hopes up, but it might very well be.

He got up and started to throw some extra clothes into a duffle bag. It didn’t matter, he decided, if this guy was or wasn’t the one who sent that email. What mattered was that he had gotten out, and he had his own version of the story to tell.

“Ey. Walrider. Let’s go. We’ve got a bus to catch and a guy to meet.”

The hazy swarm sunk into his skin- though he did still make out some of the nanoparticles still resting in clumps on his skin, like dark freckles. He didn’t know why it liked resting on him like that, but it didn’t really matter.

_“Are you sure this is a good idea?”_

“Maybe. Just try not to blow anyone up, alright?”

_“I’ll play nice if they do.”_


	29. 62. Placid

Jayce Hale had come a long way in the past month and a half.

He had finally worked at his little convenience store long enough to put in for a shift transfer. He had the morning shift, now. It was a little too bright, a little too early, but there were _much_ less creeps to worry about, and that was what mattered, wasn’t it?

It was a Sunday too, which meant a lot of people were spending the morning in Church. He liked Sundays. They were nice and relaxing, and the customers he got were usually relatively calm.

Speaking of customers-

The door bell rang to announce one. He straightened up at his counter and glanced over to greet-

…

The customer looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place him. He walked past the speechless cashier and went to go fiddle with the coffee machines. He pretended to wipe down the glass over the lottery tickets as he side eyed the man.

There were only two types of customers that he tended to remember. Regulars who came in so often he knew just about everything they were willing to say, which this guy was not. Or… Problem customers.

Still, something about that didn’t seem right either. Problem customers stood out in a special sort of way, and he didn’t get those vibes exactly. But… it was close.

It was only when the man stepped up to the counter and set down the coffee cup and some cheap individually wrapped muffins that the familiar things started to rise to the surface. The almost shifting dust on his four fingered hands, the tired but contemplative look on his face-

Oh god it was that guy that had been covered in blood. Why was he back?

… At least this time he was clean. The man pulled out a twenty to pay for his food- it was cheap, he could have still paid with a five- and Jayce automatically looked away. The guy had been tagged as dangerous in his mind and he wasn’t fucking with that.

“… Hey. Just to check- how much is one of the little energy drinks, and a couple slices of pizza?”

“Er…” And the man recognized him too. Shit. “Not much. Just about five dollars, or so, that’s all.”

“Hm.” He nodded, took the ten out of his change, and handed it back.

Jayce glanced at the money, then up at him. “Ah, did you want to order some pizza?”

“Nah. It’s for you.”

“I appreciate the offer,” he stated, “but I’m not allowed to take money from customers.”

“… I bet you’re not allowed to buy them dinner, either, huh?”

Jayce chuckled awkwardly and shook his head. “No, I’m not. That’s… a bit different, though.”

“Sure. All right.” He turned his gaze to the shelf of cigarettes behind the man. “… Hey- that green box back there. Can you grab one for me?”

Jayce hesitated, but nodded and turned to the cigarette shelf. There were… at least four different types of green packs, and they were all vastly different type-

The sound of the bell cut off his thoughts and he turned around to greet the new costumer. There was no new person walking in, though- but the strange man was gone. Ten dollars still rested on the counter.


End file.
